(also posted on The Silver Apples)

About 3 weeks ago, my dear little 19" Toshiba tube TV of 12 years died in spectacular fashion: snapped, crackled, emitted a strange smell, and died--I ran to the power strip and switched it off and unplugged everything lest my townhouse apartment burn down. That is what I get for watching Larry King Live like a geriatric person, or whatever. I think little M. V. Taylor's fingers pushing on and off the power button 8,000,000 times with a hope of yielding the Treehouse channel might have had something to do with the fantastic cathode ray tube explosion that ceased its functional life.

I pulled out the 13" Toshiba tube TV from hubby's studio apartment Ph.D. candidate days as a stop-gap to feed my cable news habit, but this was not going to tide me over for very long, as our living room is pretty large and I have developed microscope-induced myopia in my old age. B., can we make the font bigger again, BTW, this blog is hurting my eyes to write, KTHXBAI.

Mr. Through-good-times-and-in-bad is one of those anti-TV elitists. You know the type (or might even be one yourself). People who claim to be too intelligent/ productive/ busy/ social/ cool/ interesting/educated/ physically fit/ [fill in the pretentious adjective here] to watch TV. In a way, I sort of despise this sentiment, as it isn't realistic. I personally watch about 1 hour of TV per day. I enjoy it. I eat my milk and cookies (I'm not kidding), and passively sit/ lie there like a lazy slob every night, oh-so mildly entertained, instead of staring out into space or going to yoga class or whatever anti-TV elitists do to have their daily disengagement from reality which is so important for maintaining a healthy psyche in the modern world. I like watching cable news networks, documentaries on PBS or TVO, or stuff on TLC (note: only What not to Wear and Jon & Kate + 8). And Lost. And The Office. And sometimes Gordon Ramsay's various kitchen shows, because I love and envy his highly effective managerial style. BUT ONLY 1 HOUR PER NIGHT, ANTI-TV ELITIST HATERS.

So after doing approximately 0 minutes of research on currently available new TV options, I impulsively took off down the Gardiner Expressway to find the Futureshop on the Queensway (where I'd be able to park for free). I'm not really sure when was the last time I walked inside a big-box electronics store, but it wasn't recently. After adjusting to the awesomely loud reggae music blaring from the personal stereo department, I walked quickly to the "home theatre" section. I had no interest in a "home theatre," but I knew that this is where the new TVs were located. My good friend, who is somewhat obsessed with technology (friends like this are invaluable, btw) cautioned me that big box electronics stores no longer carry tube TVs, and because this is all that is left of the tube TV world anyways...*disgusted dramatic sigh*...

I realized at that moment that I had been more or less robbed of the freedom and convenience of walking into an electronics store and buying a tube TV that was a brand I recognized. So I had no other options, really, than to lay down 600 dollars (plus like 100 dollars of provincial and federal taxes which pays for my healthcare) for a modest LCD HDTV. Because HDTVs are all that The Man sells now. And yeah, I got the sales guy to take $50 dollars off the price by suggesting that I wanted to comparison shop at Best Buy before committing. Yay, Canada, land of being able to bargain at Canadian chains desperate to compete with American ones.

So I took home my HDTV. I quickly learned that a coaxial cable was not an option for HDTVs, even for non-videophiles. A coaxial cable delivers an analog signal appropriate for a standard definition tube TV, but if you plug it into an HDTV, it looks like total crap because an HDTV has way too high of a resolution (in my TV's case, it is 720p, which means 720 lines of vertical resolution with progressive scanning, whatever the F that means) and will unfortunately show you, in detail, EVERYTHING that is wrong with this type of signal, because it is an HDTV. It needs and wants a digital high-definition signal.

Happily, with my new TV's purchase I got an upgrade to get my free HD box from Rogers Cable (basically the only cable company in Canada). The HD box can take what is coming out of your coaxial cable and magically make it into a digital (sort of, but this is way too complicated to go into) high-definition signal that your new TV needs to look remotely normal. So they courier my new cable box to me, and I open it up. OK, now I'm done, you say. No. Not done.

So, anti-TV elitists reading this now will be like, "Nah-nah, you're dumb, we told you so, we are so smart and cool that we will rub it in your face, lets all have deep conversations now containing large vocabulary words and references to things that you won't understand, and work at our high-paying hard-working jobs, drive around in our Smart cars and then come home to smoke opium or read McSweeney's Quarterly Concern or listen to Portuguese jazz music, instead of watching TV, an activity for the ignorant and uneducated majority," etc., but these individuals are correct that HDTV as it is today is a total F-ing rip-off scam conspiracy orchestrated by TV manufacturers and cable conglomerates alike. Unless you want to plop a satellite dish on top of your house (granted you have the ability to face it south west and drill a hole through your wall), cable companies only carry about 10 or so free "HDTV" channels. For about $10 more monthly, you could get the National Geographic HD channel or the Discovery HD channel or the TSN HD channel. But I don't watch enough TV to spend more money than I already have on this tragic ill-fated enterprise.

Note I put "HDTV" in quotes in my last paragraph. This is because even if a channel is called high-definition, it will not be high-definition unless the broadcaster is broadcasting a show in a high-definition resolution, and your cable box is outputting a purely digital high-definition signal appropriate for your TVs resolution, and you can afford the expensive cables to tap into this purely non-converted hopefully uncompressed high-definition digital signal. Guess what: 1) Most cable companies don't even rent out or use HD cable boxes with the correct HDMI output needed achieve a digital unconverted high-definition signal (unless you want to pay 100 more dollars a month to get an HD personal digital recorder, which I neither want or need). 2) Cable companies don't have the infrastructure to carry the bandwidth necessary to provide all of the high-definition channels that are now available in the world (there are a lot of them, but you can't watch them), without compressing the crap out of them, and rendering them not really high-definition at all. And they sell these channels and their service as "high-definition," charge you more for it, and it is not even technically high-definition. I guess this doesn't matter to me, but it will matter to the rich (dumb?) videophile who just spent $1600 on a 42" 1080p so-called full HDTV (1080p is the highest of high-definitions currently known to mankind). It is effectively false advertising.

Conclusion(s): If you only watch 1 hour of TV per day, and you like watching CNN, and your toddler breaks your old cathode ray tube TV, and you don't appreciate the feeling of spending 600 dollars just so that standard definition cable channels look worse than they did on your cathode ray tube TV, and you don't want to get a PVR, or a satellite dish, or a new upconverting or HD DVD player, then now you only get crappy Canadian networks to look decent on your new flat-screen HDTV (and HDCNN, thank God, because you love looking at Anderson Cooper's zits, and being able to see just how bad Lou Dobbs' and Larry King's dye jobs really are). And when the commercials come on, or if it is a show that isn't being broadcast in high-definition, expect various-sized black borders to appear around the actual picture. So now you get to wait 15 or so years until the cable companies upgrade their infrastructure to actually give you the signal quality your HDTV needs to look normal. And you spent all of this extra money, not to mention countless hours reading about cables, HD cable boxes, cable companies, DVD players, and how the cables (wires) that run high-definition digital signals are a conspiracy designed to rip-off the consumer anyway.

So OK, we're done, right? Nope. Because after you spend all of this time and effort hooking up your HDTV with the best cables and cable box situation physically and financially possible, Now you need to adjust the picture settings on the TV itself. Think this is just contrast and tint and sharpness and brightness, right? Wrong, it is 800 times more complicated than that. If you don't bother with these so-called "Advanced Picture Settings," Larry King's suspenders will look like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and your TV won't live for very long. Oh and getting flesh tones to look remotely human? Good luck with that too.

Here is a cute little quote from that last Popular Mechanics link: "If you haven't bought an HD set yet, here's a reason to wait: Future sets will be better at upconverting [standard definition] images to HD." Great, but what if your tube TV breaks before then because you have a two year-old? You really have no choice except between the last of the tube TVs from Walmart made by some generic Chinese company you've never ever heard of, and a flat screen HDTV. Which has rendered you, the consumer, powerless.

"Ha-ha, stupid TV-watcher-commoners," say the anti-TV elitists. Perhaps they are right after all.

Notes about the author written in the third person singular: N. C. does not own a blackberry (and therefore doesn't sleep with a blackberry under her pillow or bring it on family vacations), an iPhone, an iPod, or an electric hybrid car. She actually doesn't even own a cell phone, she can be reached by land-line only. On the unfrequent day trips into Laguardia, she brings her husband's cell phone, which is usually left uncharged and silent under a pile of journal articles in his office, so don't even think of trying to call him, ever, because he will not answer it. In short: she is not a technology-slave, she just likes cable news, a lot, apparently enough to drop hundreds of dollars on being able to watch it.

So my little life has been uneventful of late, hence the lack of posts. My ex-boyfriend of more than 8 years ago now also let me onto his blogspot, so now we blog together, in an extremely platonic current events sort of way.

My daughter contracted an ear infection after a cold that she had last week. Yesterday I had to drop everything to rush her into the pediatrician's, first thing, and then pick up some pink medicine. While I was unlocking my door, her stroller rolled down the 4 concrete steps on my porch, with HER STILL IN IT. I screamed and scooped her out obviously, but she was fine despite being terrified and having a little tiny bump on her head. It could have been so much worse. Our apartment is really tough because it is full of narrow stairs from the inside leading out. And it is tough when you are carrying all of this shit as well as a 28 pound almost two year old.

But tough or not, her plummeting down the stairs was entirely my fault. The brakes on her stroller have long since broken, and there is no reason why I couldn't have taken her out before unlocking the door. There is no guilt like this. I was so emotionally traumatized, I basically flew into a blind rage at my cats after she was safely napping. I flew into a blind rage at my husband when he came home, and as I knew he would, he blamed me for the accident. As it was my fault. I have so many doubts sometimes at my ability to mother, and this event plunged me into a new sort of self-bashing.

This is so fucking gross, I am never eating meat again. Though cool if you are an immunologist, or if you are looking for a band name. Imagine, pig brain antigens being so close to ours that our immune system starts attacking our peripheral nerves! OK, ouch, and gross, but cool. Did I say I'm never eating meat again?

(this post was actually written for the silver apples)

I'm suspicious of minimalism, but especially of minimalist composers. The deconstruction of music is completely illogical and cannot reasonably yield music; moreover it is a rejection of the metaphysical power that music has over the human mind. A sterilization of sorts, a separation of the emotion from the technical aspect of playing a single note. Except that it isn't.

Most forget that silence is music's negative space. The Estonian composer Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) explains, "When I speak of silence, I mean the 'nothingness' out of which God created the world. That is why, ideally, musical silence is sacred. Silence is not simply given to us, but in order that we may draw sustenance from it." Like any composition, attention must be paid to both the positive and the negative space, or else the composition cannot be balanced. It will not make sense.

There are certain pieces of art that you relate to, instantly, completely. They mimic your consciousness. They frame your existence. After experiencing a piece of art like this, your sensory perception of the entire world becomes elevated and amplified. Everything becomes crystal clear. It affects you physically, and remains in your being until the day you die. And the most enjoyable part of art is that its meaning can be shared and debated over with others.

You might not agree, but I can tell you how important this piece of art is to my experience. When I hear it, I hear my soul hyperventilating. Close to respiratory arrest, I am gasping my final few breaths in front of God. He takes me into heaven, and I can finally see All Of It, and go on past my own death into eternal light and comfort. The silence that follows me forever after the conclusion of Fratres is still an extension of Pärt's composition, and it has no end.

Yes, like She-ra, Princess of Power. Like embedding the sound chip from your Atari 5200 into your synthesizer, and playing awesomely constructed electronic music songs. And better yet, these kids are home grown, right from the yucky city in which I live, which I am beginning slowly, to love to hate.

BUY THIS ALBUM> ITS ON iTunes, NO EXCUSES.

I used to be cool and worship music. Now, I run short on time, until I am in my car. And I also dress like shit (because I work from home) and wear the same jeans and my hiking boots everyday. I am by no means, as cool as this:

I work from home so I've replaced chatting at the water cooler with reading blogs. Oh all of the blogs I read. I read them until my eyes feel like they will pop. I read them instead of watching TV.

One thing I do not understand is this sort of new post-ironic style of commenting. It is all intelligent and snarky and tough for me to do. Sometimes I want to just point out a different perspective or bring the blogger back down to earth but I can't, I have to come up with some hillarious retort filled with appropriately-placed fucks and cunts.

Do you think I will be banned for not being cool enough? Here are some examples of comments I've left on Wonkette:

On the post titled "Ann [Coulter], babydoll, you gotta eat something" I commented "For fuck's sake, she has Marfan's syndrome. Not that I care. But. Go look it up on wikipedia, libtards."

And then on another post about this schizophrenic e-mail wonkette received (from: Stanley O.
Date: Fri, Mar 7, 2008
Subject: Who are the Real Monster, Wonektte?

THE REAL MONSTER is John McCAN'T. Now we know the facts and you are ot going to liooka t them are you. Here we have the man:

* It is FACT that John McCAN'T is from Vietnamese DEscent.
* It is FACT that JOhn McCAN'T has a baby that is NOT from Veitnam, therefore, the baby is NOT HIS.
* It is FACT that John McCAN'T is an equal war.
* IT is FACT That the media (WONKETTE) Doesn't want this FACT to be known and makes up gibbeirsh fro heis slave dolar. More FANTASY than FACT is the media whore lullaby. Therefore, WONKETTE you are the whore's cunt.

Hilory Clinton has RODHAM POWER. Tomorow nows the truth, but you forget it for today. Typical Whore STUNT. Good Luck, slime media. I suppose you think a woman writes this now a white man has to support John McCAN'T??? Why??? Because of God's made similarity? THnak you I'll stay this way. Barock Obama has it wrong: No, John McCAN't! No, MAN OR CUNT? CUNT! Forget FANTASTY for ONCE. Look at FACTS. Stanley O. Washinton District fo Columbia.)

So my comment was:

"From the DSM-IV (pg 300, paragraph 2):

"The speech of individuals with Schizophrenia may be disorganized in a variety of ways. The person may 'slip off the track' from one topic to another ('derailment' or 'loose associations'), answers to questions may be obliquely related or completely unrelated ('tangentiality'), and rarely, speech may be so severely disorganized that it is nearly incomprehensible and resembles receptive aphasia in its linguistic disorganization ('incoherence' or 'word salad')."

Pass the Kraft Zesty Italian, cunt."

I don't think I am good at this commenting thing. I am not cool enough, I need to quit pretending I'm someone that I am clearly not.

Wow what a complex and misunderstood issue. But yet there are obvious truths. Um:

1) Climate change, not global warming, or cooling. Warming some places, cooling others, and let's forget about the sun going dim because that is inevitable. Regionally, this will be good for some of us humans, bad for others, so it will all even out. Especially because of economic forces which we should blindly trust to save us all, right? Cos it's always a great idea to wait until problems get to a totally catastrophic level, and then deal with them. With our gigantic brains, we should really be smarter than this, but we're not.

2) Natural, or man-made? For frick's sake:
a) The meteor than crashed into the Yucatan and effectively killed off the dinosaurs in, like, five minutes is a fine example of natural and rapid climate change. The sun getting colder some years due to solar storm activity is another. BUT: MOST CLIMATE CHANGE HAPPENS VERY VERY SLOWLY. UNTIL PEOPLE CAME ALONG.
b) Think about this, you anthropocentric free marketers: Millions of years ago, the earth had a hell of a lot more CO2 in its atmosphere, as the planet was still relatively new and lots of geothermic stuff was going on. It was a really really hot place, as well. What happened? Well, plants happened, and on a massive scale. Giant ferns and mosses blanketing every inch of the land, siphoning the gaseous CO2 away into themselves (yay, photosynthesis!), converting it into oxygen for all of the aerobic organisms to enjoy. This period is aptly named the "carboniferous" period. Afterwards, all of the organic plant matter was broken down and crushed underground into the oil and natural gas and coal you and I love so much.
c) You can't stand there and tell me that humans digging up and burning up all of the coal, oil, and natural gas ravenously for the past 150 or so odd years isn't changing the fraction of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere, because it is. Hurrah! Let's put all of the CO2 that the ancient giant ferns and mosses buried underground back into the air really really really fast and see what happens. The forests will take care of it, right? WRONG. Because we've chopped all of those down too, so we can farm. When the earth is scorched, let's see how much farming we'll be able to do then.

3) Well, f@#$ the polar bears, what good do they do us humans anyways:
a) Chopping off the top of the food chain anywhere is always a really, really bad idea. Like rabbits in Australia bad.
b) Polar bears aren't able to adapt rapidly enough to the melting sea ice, so they are too specialized to deal with climate change, and therefore deserve to die. No. Why? Because:
c) The same thing could be said about us humans. We should be smart enough to anticipate the consequences of our actions now, before it is too late and millions of us die from having no food, fresh water, or energy. But we're not, and we're going to end up like the dinosaurs and the polar bears. Because we're not adaptable enough, either. Then the rats will again take over. You'll see how much economy happens when your precious wall street is drowning under the ocean. You'll get yours, humans.

4) 80% of people on this earth do not consume natural resources to the extreme degree that western "developed" countries (the other 20%) do. So, what happens when everyone in China and India and Africa and South America decide that they should be entitled to cars and good food and clean water too (and why shouldn't they be)?

Don't worry, market forces will take care of it, except, there probably won't be a market at that final stage of the game. Let's all wait till then. What a great idea. You fools. The end.

Last night there was a blizzard that dropped 30 cm of snow on us. That is a foot, for those not picturing metric measurements in their heads yet. Anyways, being the second major snowstorm in one week, it wasn't very much fun. I forgot to mention how Canada bleeds Toronto out as a tax base, underfunding the city's infrastructure. This means no plowing of any side streets and sidewalks which makes it impossible for anyone to get around. Its the most awful city I've ever lived in when it snows, which says a lot as I spent the first 18 years of my life in Buffalo.

It is nice when the snow blots out the ugliness of Toronto, at least for a little while. The sun came out, and it was beautiful:





From our balcony (the brutalist building in the background is Robarts Library, U of T's main library)

I am hideous at soliciting friends, which I have proven by not really trying to get any. I guess I am a little uncomfortable trying to find people by letting them read my thoughts. I like reading blogs a lot though. I don't really feel like changing my picture everytime I comment or post. My blog is really brown and basic.

I wonder how long I will go about continuing my live journaling. I use facebook a lot, but those are people I've actually known.

I am not sure I am feeling the whole live journal thing.

I am writing a weird obsessive essay on the Toronto zoo. Once its done I will send out a link to the three friends I have on live journal. :)

Last night I called my grandmother and grandfather to wish them a happy 60th wedding anniversary, which if you think about it, is a monumental occasion. And they both have been relatively healthy too.

My grandmother said that they went out to a nice dinner together. I asked them if it was a fancy place, and they said yes it was. Guess where they went out to dinner. The Outback Steakhouse. For their 60TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY. :D

I thought this was so cute and sort of funny. If Mark and I are still together and alive 55 years from now, I have vowed to myself that I am going to go out to a 5 star restaurant.

Pottery is so hard. I have a new respect for it. It requires a lot of upper body strength. I am not very coordinated in general and I have no idea where my hands are supposed to go. I can't even really figure out how to make the lump of clay be symmetrically placed onto the wheel.

I just hope that after 12 weeks and 300 dollars I can make one thing that is remotely functional/aesthetically pleasing.

These people make it look sooooooooo easy.

After last night I am motivated to fill out all of the paperwork to get my absentee ballot. Because MA is the last state I was registered to vote in, that is where my absentee ballot will go. Hey, maybe I can still get it in time for the MA primary February 5.

I suppose if I had to guess Obama stands a better chance in MA than Hillary, because the Democrats there are so very very liberal. I remember voting for the MA governor, and checking the county by county stats, and seeing that like 87% of people in Sussex county (where the city of Boston is) voted democratic, and a whopping 90% in Middlesex (where Cambridge is, where I lived) voted democrat. MA is like the closest thing we've got to a communist state. :)

So my vote really won't matter, but still.

Apparently Ms. Clinton started to tear up this morning in New Hampshire. Because she's never lost at anything in her life. Poor thing. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/us/politics/07cnd-campaign.html?hp

I hadn't really given the primaries any thought now that I live in Canada; my vote in a general election would only be counted if it were a tie. Because I am now an absentee ballot.

It was awesome when I lived in New Hampshire though, the primary candidates would all come through Hanover/Lebanon, giving talks at Dartmouth or at the Lebanon Opera House. I never bothered going due to my hatred of crowds, but I sincerely loved being so important as an independent voter. Getting the phone calls, being bombarded with ads on television, seeing signs on nearly every front lawn. Having people ringing my doorbell and talking with them about the candidates. Nowhere else have I seen such passion for elections. New Hampshire is such a tiny state, but being the first primary, is critical in determining who will be the Republican and Democratic nominee. And I did vote in the 2004 primary, because I felt like it actually mattered. And lo and behold in the 2004 general election, NH tipped over and became a blue state. Did I have something to do with that? Hmm.

My mother in law asked me last night what I thought of the primaries. Canadians are really naive of what it is like being an actual American citizen and voting the way we do (Canadians choose their local provincial representatives but have no stake in who becomes prime minister, because it is sort of like parliament), but still are very interested in American poiltics (much much more, obviously, than Americans are in Canadian politics). I told her that I was excited about Obama winning, more excited about Hillary losing (this comes from being born in New York State), and am scared that neither Obama nor Hillary will be able to win against the red core of our country. And yeah, I do think they have a real chance of losing because neither of them is a white male. I don't give Americans alot of credit, especially after George Bush junior spent two terms as out president. Mike Huckabee scares the shit out of me, he has a much better chance than most people think, because of the evangelical Christian slant. And holy crap, a flat income tax? AUGHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Though my favorite candidate is Ron Paul, although he will never ever win.

(Just in case you were wondering. I love the fact that I can finally SEE my favorite synth-pop bands on youtube. Because I was like 2 at the time.)

I guess this is a topic which I've always felt strongly about, as a parent, and as a person who does extensive research on psychiatric drug markets. More and more pharmaceutical companies with branded psychopharmacologic products are turning towards the pediatric population (i.e. kids that are diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depression, eating disorders, ADHD, etc.) in order to increase prescriptions and revenue before their patents run out. The usage of hardcore psychiatric drugs in kids under 15 is increasing at an alarming rate, fueled by FDA approvals of atypical antipsychotics (like Abilify) for use in pediatric patients. And then the media leaps upon stories like poor little Rebecca Riley's.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/07/girl_fed_fatal_overdoses_court_told/?page=2

I guess my problem is that in speaking to high-profile psychiatrists and thought-leaders throughout the U.S. and Europe (as part of the primary research part of my job), I've learned that the most severe psychiatric diseases such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia generally don't and can't surface until late adolescence, usually when most of us are in college. I don't agree with diagnosing a 5 year old with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. I don't beleive it is neurophysiologically possible for these diseases to be present in such immature, rapidly-developing brains. And then prescribing hardcore drugs that seriously change serotonin and dopamine levels in the brain to children. Serotonin and dopamine are two monoamine neurotransmitters that exhibit trophic effects during brain development (i.e. determining which neurons need to die and which neurons need to synapse onto others along neural circuits that affect various parts of the limbic system). So basically, who the fuck knows what you are doing to a developing frontal cortex when you give Abilify to a 7 year old. Or even a 12 year old.

And now there is this: a campaign from the NYU Child Study Center which aims to increase awareness about childhood psychiatric disorders by sticking ransom notes all over NYC that say things like "We have your son. We will make sure he will no longer be able to care for himself or interact socially as long as he lives. This is only the beginning…Autism." Or even better is the one for major depression "We have taken your son. We have imprisoned him in a maze of darkness with no hope of ever getting out. Do nothing and see what happens…Depression." While I am not daft enough to not realize autism is something entirely different (especially in that it is a developmental disorder, not a psychiatric disorder) from let's say, giving a 5 year old Prozac, I'm worried that such campaigns are just going to fuel the overmedication of our kids and cause them to be sedated zombies. Or even worse, giving powerful prescription drugs to parents who aren't educated enough to know the difference between the behavior of a normal toddler versus one that has been medicated to the point of overdose.

http://www.abboutourkids.org

What do you think?

I love Stephen Stahl. If you don't know, he is the godfather of psychopharmacology. He has written the best textbooks and is on the largest number of scientific advisory boards and has given the best lectures and has written the most papers on the topic. Having had the pleasure of interviewing him several times for my research in the major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder and bipolar disorder markets, I can honestly say I am scientifically in love with him. And he has the best sense of humor. He has made his you tube debut! Watch the video below if you appreciate the fine art of psychopharmacology.

I have been putting off telling the super about the squirrels that live in our ceiling. We live on the 2nd and 3rd floors of a Victorian-era brick townhouse which is very prototypical of the Annex. These houses have steep eaves with plenty of housing opportunities for urban wildlife.

If you've never visited Toronto, about 95% of the squirrels here are melanistic squirrels. Melanism is the opposite of albinism where the pigment gene is over-expressed turning an organism's skin into one giant black mass. Despite rumours to the contrary, these black squirrels are a naturally occurring phase of the gray squirrel originating in Southern Ontario and Quebec. You can also find them around Washington DC too as they escaped from the National Zoo at one point when they had a melanistic squirrel exhibit. Melanistic squirrels look like this:



I digress. We had two melanistic squirrels living in our ceiling. At first I had no qualms about them lodging there for the winter as they weren't really bothering me and I don't own the building. However, a parent at Madeleine's daycare warned me that these guys are extremely resourceful and have the ability and motivation to chew through the soft old fashioned plaster and get direct access to your warm house, food-filled cupboards, your cats, and your babies. Hearing them scratching on the surface of the ceiling day in and day out began to freak me out as they sounded like they were coming closer and closer to moving in. So I told the super about them last week, and today a gray morbid looking van that said "Wildlife Control: Squirrels, Raccoons, Birds, Skunks, Rats, and Possums" on the side of it pulled up outside my house. Two young looking sort of attractive squirrel hunters climbed up tall ladders and found the entrance point (a vent under the eaves), went into the teeny crawl space, and cleaned out the squirrel nests. Then they sealed the hole with metal mesh bolted to the brick and wood (such mesh had been applied to every possible roof entry point, although the renegade squirrels had pulled it away. They are very strong.)

I just wanted to let you know that there was no violence involved. I was worried that they were going to poison them or something awful, sealing my fate in the afterlife in rodent hell (I was solely responsible for nearly 500 rat deaths in grad school, so my rodent karma is all but depleted) but apparently they were just evicted. The now-homeless squirrels spent the rest of the afternoon running around on the roof outside, panicking because they are now without a nighttime retreat out of the snow and rain. I'm not too worried though, because squirrels are so freaking smart. Someday when all of the humans have killed each other, the rodents will again take over. After all, small, industrious mammals were the only ones that survived that giant meteor that crashed into the Yucatan and killed the dinosaurs a while back. And if it weren't for them, us humans would have never evolved.

Radiohead covered them the other night in their webcast. I nearly shit my pants because I don't know what to do when my favorite band covers my favorite band.

I love You Tube, for bringing this 1984 clip to the masses. HOLY SHIT WHAT ARE THEY WEARING:

I am not going to go into the short bohemian life of New Zealand-born early 20th century author Katherine Mansfield here, you can find her on wikipedia. However I have been really enjoying female authors lately that deal with the dark side of motherhood and domestic life. Not that I don't love every second of being Madeleine's mom. I do, but there are a lot of gender role/marriage issues/anxiety/feelings of being totally consumed/personality crises that accompany you when you go from being a youngish professional woman to being covered in eggs and apple juice and regularly hanging out in the sandbox. Here are passages from At the Bay, a short story from The Garden Party, her third and last publication during her lifetime, that for some reason really struck me:

"Linda frowned; she sat up quickly in her steamer chair and clasped her ankles. Yes, that was her real grudge against life; that was what she could not understand. That was the question she asked and asked, and listened in vain for the answer. It was all very well to say it was the common lot of women to bear children. It wasn't true. She, for one, could prove that wrong. She was broken, made weak, her courage was gone, through child-bearing. And what made it doubly hard to bear was, she did not love her children. It was useless pretending. Even if she had the strength she never would have nursed or played with the little girls. No, it was as though a cold breath had chilled her through and through on each of those awful journeys; she had no warmth left to give them...."

after some dedication to the plot, it continues:

"The boy had turned over. He lay facing her, and he was no longer asleep. His dark-blue, baby eyes were open; he looked as though he was peeping at his mother. And suddenly his face dimpled; it broke into a wide, toothless smile, a perfect beam, no less.

"I'm here!" that happy smile seemed to say. "Why don't you like me?"

There was something so quaint, so unexpected about that smile that Linda smiled herself. But she checked herself and said to the boy coldly, "I don't like babies."

"Don't like babies?" The boy couldn't believe her. "Don't like me?" He waved his arms foolishly at his mother.

Linda dropped off her chair on to the grass.

"Why do you keep on smiling? she said severely. "If you knew what I was thinking about, you wouldn't."

But he only squeezed up his eyes, slyly, and rolled his head on the pillow. He didn't believe a word she said.
"We all know about that!" smiled the boy.

Linda was so astonished at the confidence of this little creature. . . Ah no, be sincere. That was not what she felt; it was something far different, it was something so new so. . .The tears danced in her eyes; she breathed in a small whisper to the boy, "Hallo, my funny!"

But by now the boy had forgotten his mother."

I know that domestic life to some would be the most boring thing ever to read about, but Katherine Mansfield took the smallest situations in day to day life and made them convey powerful aspects of human nature. I see all of the things that she writes about in people. I see the blank stares of tired moms at the park, speaking distantly to their toddlers as they push them on the swings. People think that you automatically instinctively love your child the moment its slimy body is placed screaming onto your chest, but you don't. How this love develops is different in every situation, and depends so much on the personalities of the two human minds involved. And sometimes you simply have nothing left to give, and are left numb by your selflessness, and still have to smile insincerely down at this totally innocent and dependent being, keeping up the farce.